Last year, some important changes to the Veterinary Medicines code came into effect. One key change was that vets could only script critically important ‘red dot’ antibiotics for a maximum of 4 months at a time. These antibiotics include: Mastalone, Tylan, Tylovet, Tylofen, Tyloguard, Excede LA, and Excenel Flow.

This change encouraged more discussions between vets and farmers about appropriate use of these antibiotics: they should only be used in rare cases when an infection has not responded to treatment using less critical ‘green dot’ antibiotics such as Intracillin and in herds where resistance to these antibiotics hasn’t been detected using the Dairy Antibiogram (DAB).
We have seen some encouraging trends as a result of these discussions. There has been a significant reduction in critically important antibiotic sales between 1st July 2020 and 1st March 2021, compared with the same period the previous season.

• Excede LA / Excenel Flow – 54% reduction
• Mastalone – 23% reduction
• Tylosin (Tylan/Tylovet/Tylofen/Tyloguard) – 53% reduction

Thank you for working with us to preserve and prolong the effectiveness of these critically important antibiotics – so they continue to be effective in treating hard-to-treat bacterial infections in humans.